Shrink (resize) ext4 partition takes forever

I'm using GParted 0.7.0 in Debian testing "Squeeze" AMD64 (sorry this is the Ubuntu Forum, but i couldn't find an answer in Debian Forums and it works the same way in both). I have Ubuntu 64bit, Windows XP and the Linux swap in the other three partitions of my 500gb hard disk, and as I'm going to replace Ubuntu by Debian completely, i just wanted to make the Ubuntu partition smaller and make the Debian partition larger in order to have enough space to copy all my files before erasing Ubuntu.

I'm using Gparted to shrink/resize the Ubuntu partition from 195 GiB to 111 GiB, and it seemed to work properly, but the problem is it's been running for about twenty hours already. At the beginning, the calibration and the file system check went fine, no errors (in about thirty seconds), but the shrink process is taking forever. Before, my computer seemed to work, my processors were working hard, but now it seems like it stopped working, though the program has not crashed and responds. And it is working, i can't mount the Ubuntu partition, or check it with another Gparted instance.

Also another strange thing is that i can't mount any external disk, i.e. my usb stick, or even my Windows XP partition. That's quite strange, isn't it?

I don't want to stop the process and loose data, but i'd like to know if waiting more hours could solve it or there is some sort of problem.

Thanks!